I’m not sure if anyone noticed, but over the past few days, Google made a change to the “Sitelinks” they show for some sites in the SERPS (see image below). They previously only showed 4 links, and now they are showing up to 8. I also noticed that SEOlogs.com now has it’s own sitelinks when you search for [seo logs], [seologs], or [seologs.com].

It’s funny though, because after 2+ years, they still ask: Did you mean: socalgas whenever someone searches for [seologs] or even [seologs.com], but underneath that, they show my Sitelinks!

Does this mean we’re special? I’d like to think so. Here’s what Google has to say about it.

The links shown below some sites in our search results, called sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for.

We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.

At the moment, sitelinks are completely automated. We’re always working to improve our sitelinks algorithms, and we may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

Google has recently added the ability to actually edit these Sitelinks in the Google webmaster Tools console. Well, I think you can edit them. They show a list of the links with a link to “block” beside each one. I’m really not sure exactly what that means, but I don’t think I’ll try it out just yet.

Even if you don’t have Sitelinks, Google has added a few new features to the Webmaster Tools area that are definitely worth checking out.

Also, I’d love to hear any thoughts on why only certain sites get these Sitelinks. Anyone? … Bueller? …

When it comes to increasing Adsense earnings, the 3 factors that influence CTR the most are:
- Ad Location
- Ad Format
- Ad Colors

There are endless possibilities and combinations for these 3 factors, and finding the right ones can have a huge impact on your earnings. The problem is that it’s not easy to find the right combinations of these factors. Sure, you have guidelines that countless blogs, and even Google have given to help you, but the truth is, there is no one magic combination of colors, location and format. Your site is unique, therefore, you’ll need to find the combinations that will work and perform best for you.

To do this, you need to experiment and test different ad variations on your site, and today, I’m going to show you a fast and efficient way to do this using PHP and custom Adsense channels. For this to work, you’ll need a page that can execute PHP. For this tutorial, I’ll assume you’re using Wordpress.

(If you would like to use this tutorial, but can’t use PHP, I’ve included a Javascript example at the bottom of the post, which will also work great for testing different versions Adsense on your site.)

1) The first thing you’ll need to do is pick a location on your site where you want to test. You should pick a location where you are already running an Adsense ad.

For this test, we’ll be working with a leaderboard size ad in the the header of a page ( in wp, header.php), but you can do this anywhere you have an ad you’d like to test.

2) Create some custom Adsense channels. You do this in your Adsense account, under “Adsense Setup” > “Adsense for Content” area when you make new ads.

Lets keep this simple and start with only 2 channels, but once you get going, you can simultaneously test as many channels as you want to.

One of the ad variations should be the size and color configuration that you are currently using. This will be your control configuration, and you can compare all new configurations to it.

For the second channel/ ad, you should start with the current configuration, and make one change to it.

Here is our current configuration: Channel A, the control:






And here is channel B. I changed the border color from FFFFFF (white) to 999999 (gray)






You can pick whatever color you want. Don’t be afraid to try something different. That’s the point here.

You should have 2 ads now, each with their own Adsense channel, something like this:

<script type="text/javascript"><!--





//2007-010-28: test channel A






//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src=" http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

And one for test Channel B:
<script type="text/javascript"><!--





//2007-010-28: test channel B






//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src=" http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

3) Now we’re going to get started with the PHP. The script we’re going to use is very simple, and just randomly displays 2 different ads.

This is what it looks like before we add our 2 Adsense variations. Study it for a minute. Read the comments, and see if you can understand it.
<?php
$ad_num = rand(1,2); //create a variable, $ad_num, a random number between 1 and 2
$adsense_ad[1] = 'FIRST AD GOES HERE'; // holds our first ad
$adsense_ad[2] = 'SECOND AD GOES HERE'; // holds our second ad
echo $adsense_ad[$ad_num]; // prints or echoes our ad, depending on the random number
?>

And here’s what it looks like when we add our 2 Adsense ads.
<?php
$ad_num = rand(1,2); //create a variable, $ad_num, a random number between 1 and 2
$adsense_ad[1] = '<script type="text/javascript"><!--





//2007-010-28: test channel A






//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src=" http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>'; // holds our first ad
$adsense_ad[2] = '<script type="text/javascript"><!--





//2007-010-28: test channel B






//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src=" http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>'; // holds our second ad
echo $adsense_ad[$ad_num]; // prints or echoes our ad, depending on the random number
?>

4. Start Testing.
Open your header.php, and replace your existing Adsense ad with the new PHP test code.

5) Check your results to declare a winner
After a day or so of testing, you should be able to log in and check the results. You’ll have to go into the advanced reports section, and view the custom channel report. When doing tests like this, the more pageviews you have, the more accurate your test results will be. So if you don’t have a winner yet, wait a little longer.

6) Repeat
Choose the ad that performs best, and for the next test, create a new channel, make another change to the ad colors, and test it against the winner of the first test.

Adding more ad variations:
If you would like to, you can easily modify the script to add more than 2 ads, and If you can test on over 1000 pageviews per day, I’d definitely recommend doing this.

All you need to do is add more $adsense_ad array items, and adjust the rand() function (random number generator) so it returns a number in the range of the adsense_ad[] array.

For example. If I want to test 4 ads at once, I just change the second parameter in the rand() function to 4, and add 2 more $adsense_ad array items, that contain the new ads.
<?php
$ad_num = rand(1,4); //create a variable, $ad_num, a random number between 1 and 2
$adsense_ad[1] = 'FIRST AD GOES HERE'; // holds our first ad
$adsense_ad[2] = 'SECOND AD GOES HERE'; // holds our second ad
$adsense_ad[3] = 'THIRD AD GOES HERE'; // holds our third ad
$adsense_ad[4] = 'FOURTH AD GOES HERE'; // holds our fourth ad
echo $adsense_ad[$ad_num]; // prints or echoes our ad, depending on the random number
?>

Javascript Alternative
If you would like to try this, but can’t use PHP, here is a good Javascript alternative.
<script type="text/javascript">
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){
//your first ad unit code goes here
} else {
//your second ad unit code goes here
}
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”></script>


When using this template, remember to replace “//your first ad unit goes here” with your ad code inside the first set of <script></script> tags, like so:

<script type="text/javascript">
var random_number = Math.random();
if (random_number < .5){





//2007-010-28: test channel A






} else {





//2007-010-28: test channel B






}
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>


The official Adsense blog has a little bit more on using the Javascript method, as well as more on A/B testing. See it here.

Well, it seems as if I’m finally part of the “In-Crowd”. The Pagerank of SEOlogs.com home page dropped from PR5 down to PR4.

Wait… What?

Pagerank is doing What now?!… Going Back Up!?

That’s right, according to Andy Beard (see post), many of the sites that saw up to triple digit hits over the past couple of days, are now getting those little green blobs back, and it looks like lots of other sites, including dnScoop.com, which went from PR4 to PR5, are seeing pagerank increases.

It’s actually sort of amusing just how much buzz there is about this pagerank update, considering that the general consensus about PR was, and still is, that pagerank doesn’t matter anymore.

We may not want to admit it, but I suspect that a lot of us are having a hard time letting the pagerank glory days go. Those days of proudly showing off your high pagerank pages, and trying to figure out how many links it would take to move you up to that next level of pagerank glory.

I often get emails asking, “How do I increase my Pagerank?”, or “How did you get a PR5?”. The answer simple answer to those questions is “Links”, but since the original idea of pagerank has been confounded so much, there really is no way to make sense of which links you should get, or which will pass pagerank. In that sense, I suppose that in that sense, Google is getting what they wanted; for people to stop trying to manipulate rankings by buying and trading links.

Well, what I have noticed so far, and what many of you who lost pagerank during the last few days have also noticed, is that when you lost 1, 2, and even 3 pagerank points, NOTHING HAPPENED! You didn’t loose any traffic at all. In fact, your traffic is probably increasing. Mine is.

What Really Matters
When you take away everything else, what really matters is popularity. How well to people actually like a site. How much traffic does the site get? How many times has a site been Dugg, voted up on Reddit, favorited in Del.icio.us, Stumbled Upon, or Sphunn? If you’re a blogger… How many feedburner subscribers does your blog have? Do readers comment? What’s your technorati rank?

These are the indicators and goals that matter. Everything else is just for show.

Yahoo has posted a quick explanation about the backlinks issue I discussed in yesterday’s screencast.

Update on Site Explorer Results and Counts Data

Recently, some of you noticed changes in counts for Site Explorer results, where the counts were different for logged-in users versus logged-out users.

While the counts have been incorrect in some cases, the actual returned results have been correct. However, we did roll out a product fix yesterday and will be rolling out a couple more over the next few days to resolve this difference in counts some of you have observed.

Please disregard any counts for inlinks reported by Site Explorer from October 11 through next week. Thank you for raising this issue.

Priyank Garg
Yahoo! Search

Now if someone from Google would start explaining exactly what is going on with Pagerank…

Lately I’ve been having some problems getting backlink counts from Yahoo’s Site Explorer API, as well as the public Site Explorer interface.

In this screencast, I show a couple of alternative methods of getting link counts from Yahoo.